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Before she hosts 'SNL,' watch Jenna Ortega face down 'Hot Ones' without breaking a sweat
Shrugging off the burn from the world’s hottest wings? For Ortega, it’s just another Wednesday.
Jenna Ortega already has the last laugh ahead of her upcoming hosting spot on Saturday Night Live, because we’ve never seen anyone ace a scalding gauntlet of hot wings the way the Scream VI star just did as the latest Hot Ones celebrity food victim.
No Scoville unit on the popular web series was too spicy for Ortega’s ice-cold palate, as the self-confessed horror respecter and titular star of Netflix’s Wednesday placidly nibbled her way through an ever-escalating inferno of tearjerking hot sauces.
RELATED: Jenna Ortega reluctantly does viral ‘Wednesday’ dance ahead of ‘Saturday Night Live’ hosting debut
Well, okay: At one point, Ortega’s eyes maybe, sorta-kinda started to water just a little. But she swatted away each and every one of Hot Ones host Sean Evans’ humorously ill-timed interview questions with total composure…even as Evans himself cast a bleary yearning eye toward the panic button.
Check it out:
How cucumber-cool are we talking? Here’s how Ortega waxed poetic on her favorite Tim Burton project (after Wednesday, of course) — all while extinguishing yet another hot wing sample intended by the show’s creators to totally fry her taste buds:
“I feel like Beetlejuice is a staple, so I’ve always appreciated Beetlejuice,” she said, with nary a hint of heat-induced distress. “But also, when I was younger, I wanted to be one of the aliens from Mars Attacks so bad! But not the Lisa Marie one; the one with the exposed braid. He’s got Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close in there — it’s an incredible movie. I feel like people don’t give it the credit it deserves.”
Try saying that with a five-alarm fire in your mouth. Chalk up Ortega’s deadpan wing demeanor to her natural resilience to spicy culinary chaos: “Typically, I can handle my stuff,” she admitted.
Ice in her veins should make Ortega’s SNL stint all the more interesting this weekend, what with the unpredictable chaos of live comedy and all. But Ortega’s chill reputation already precedes her: Burton admired her ability to shoot entire Netflix takes without blinking so much that he ended up making it a whole new feature of her updated spin on Wednesday Addams’ stone-faced persona.
Ortega also reprises her 2022 Scream role as Tara Carpenter in Scream VI, shifting the horror over to the bright lights of New York in what original Scream screenwriter and Scream VI co-EP Kevin Williamson recently described to SYFY WIRE as “this big, huge, fresh reinvention” of the franchise. “I love, love, love, love it. I’ve watched the movie with a big smile on my face. I think it's everything and more. And going to New York was awesome. The movie feels new, it feels fresh, it feels like a new movie.”
Totally unfazed by her brush with hot wing hell, Ortega is probably equally fresh as she hits the home stretch toward her first-ever Saturday Night Live hosting gig. Catch Ortega in Scream VI beginning today in theaters everywhere, and watch her go live from New York alongside musical guests The 1975, when SNL returns to NBC starting at 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, March 11.
Ready for a hilarious roll down memory lane? Episodes from all 48 seasons of Saturday Night Live are available to stream anytime at Peacock.
